Friday, August 20, 2010

One that I like a lot is Arches hot press watercolor board . It's more expensive than my standard love, Strathmore 500 imperial. Maybe the fact that it's more expensive helps focus my work in a way... "Shoot, I only have two more sheets of this!"

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Monday, August 16, 2010

I used to start my day off reading the news. Nowadays that pretty much just ruins my day. Is the world filled with Doom & Gloom, or is it just that Doom & Gloom sells? It doesn't matter. Doom & Gloom is depressing, so I found some Good News sources.

In the nick of time, the Man of Steel saved a family's home ... for real. A couple facing foreclosure found the collateral they desperately needed with the discovery of an Action Comics #1 (aka, the Holy Grail of comic books) in their basement.

As any true fanboy knows, Action Comics #1 is the most significant comic of all time because it was Superman's debut. In fact, the issue birthed the entire genre of the superhero.

The fortuitous find occurred when the anonymous family began the painful process of packing up their home due to a bank's foreclosure proceedings. The house had been in the family's possession since the 1950s, which is probably when the wife's father stashed the issue in a box with some other, mere mortal titles. When they first realized what they had found, they contacted Stephen Fishler, co-owner of New York's ComicConnect andMetropolis Collectibles.

"They said they came across a box that had magazines in it and some old comic books," Fishler told Asylum. "And that they came across what appears to be an Action #1." Fishler points out that "99.9 percent" of similar calls he receives turn out to be about reprints, so at first he was dubious. "They took a cell phone picture of the book and texted it to me, and I realized it was an Action #1," he says. Link

Storyteller Chris Van Allsburg (Jumanji, Zathura, The Polar Express) takes a new route with his forthcoming picture book, Queen of the Falls, which tells the story of the first woman to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.